Paul Volcker

I’m starting to like the former Federal Reserve chairman more and more.

The Lost Generation

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development sees the profound problems facing young Americans:

The current major economic downturn has brought about a significant worsening in the labour market performance of US youth. In the two years to September 2009, the employment rate of youth aged 16-24 fell by 7 percentage points to 46% and their unemployment rate rose by 7 percentage points to 18%. Despite talk that the worst of the recession may be over, there is little doubt that its labour market consequences will persist over the coming quarters.

Evidence from the aftermath of the early 2000s slowdown in the United States casts doubts on how quickly the youth labour market is likely to recover from the current deep recession. Indeed, in 2007, the labour market performance of youth still stood significantly below its 2000 level. The youth employment rate was 53% in 2007 compared with 60% in 2000; the youth unemployment rate, at 11%, was about 1 percentage point higher than its 2000 level…

In 2008, the incidence of long-term unemployment among youth in the United States was 7.1% versus an OECD average of 18.5% (Figure 1.7). This incidence increased over the past decade from 4.9% in 1998 whereas it declined for the OECD average. In particular, the incidence of long-term unemployment rose by 0.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2008 as a result of the ongoing economic crisis.

Any young person out of college and in his twenties — and perhaps even in his thirties — can tell you plenty of stories. The entire generation is generally upset, and rightly so. Here is what the OECD recommends that the U.S. government do:

• Temporarily relax unemployment benefit eligibility criteria for youths with some work experience, but apply strict job-search requirements;
• Expand existing early-childhood education programmes and provide more support for parents and children when they go to primary school;
• Extend vocational training by rolling out nationwide Career Academies, small learning establishments within high schools combining academic and technical education;
• Broaden the role of the Office of Apprenticeships to include funding responsibilities and introduce subsidies and sub minimum wages for apprentices in order to promote the use of apprenticeships in SMEs and for teenagers and at risk youths;
• Favour summer jobs programmes for at risk youths who are still at school;
• Expand the Job Corps programme for young adults and encourage teenagers to stay on the programme longer and do more vocational training.

I especially like the recommendation to increase the level of vocational training in the United States. The days when a person can earn a comfortable salary with benefits and a pension by being a cubicle-dweller are over. Those jobs can be outsourced — a plumber or auto mechanic cannot. A liberal-arts education is wonderful for a brain, but it no longer guarantees a good job. (See here, here, and here.)

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog is sympathetic, but it prescribes the wrong solution:

The broader point [of the data], I think, is that sustained, high levels of youth unemployment can lead to serious problems, including rising levels of crime, nationalism and economic populism, and lower growth potential as a generation of underemployed workers makes its way through the workforce. The cost-benefit analysis for generous assistance to young workers would seem to be pretty favourable, particularly if that assistance includes incentives to obtain more education.

The solution is not to send even more people to college — it is to help those who did go to college, took out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, and are now close to poverty. Canceling or paying off the country’s student-loan debt would cost the government less than the various bailouts, and it would help the economy immediately by freeing up millions or billions of dollars to be spent on items like, well, homes. Two-thirds of America’s GDP is consumer spending, after all.

As Vox Day notes in a post on recent unemployment statistics:

This is also the result of the higher education bubble. I don’t remember who said it, but he was correct in pointing out that expanding higher education to the masses doesn’t mean that you won’t have sales clerks any more, it simply means that you’ll have sales clerks with PhDs.

Supply and demand. Economies of scale. I could enter any Economics 101 buzzword of choice to state what everyone should already know.

If something is not done to help younger people, the Baby Boomers will be facing intergenerational warfare. And with each passing year, their numbers dwindle even more.

On Palestine

JERUSALEM — Perhaps underneath everyone’s noses, a economically-viable Palestinian state is reportedly being built. Since an official peace is still a long time away, perhaps an “economic peace” — in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s words — is the best we can hope for right now.

Online Advertising

I am now accepting various types of advertising on the blog. Have a partnership idea or something to pitch? Go here for more information.

American Paradoxes

When you take a step back and look at the big picture, it seems that the United States is frequently a land of paradoxes. Here are two of them.

• “The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.”

• “Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed with suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned.”

And, of course, these two paradoxes seemingly contradict each other while remaining accurate as well. The United States needs to get its fiscal act together if the country wants to remain a viable, economic superpower.

Letter from Israel: Me and the Israeli Arab

Sixteenth in an ongoing series

RISHON LEZION, Israel — “Why hire a non-Jew when you can hire a Jew?”

That was the response of a local bar owner when I asked him, out of curiosity, whether he would hire an Israeli Arab as a bartender or waitress if the person were attractive, friendly, and experienced. Earlier that day, I had asked the owner of a local kiosk — something like a convenience store — whom I know whether there were any local companies that provide cleaning services. For the equivalent of $12 for two hours of work, I could have my small apartment cleaned as often as I like.

The kiosk owner, to my surprise, called out to another shopper in the store and asked him in Hebrew whether he wanted a cleaning job. Evidently, they were friends. I spoke to the other person — a guy who was my age — and he agreed to come over the next evening after we haggled over the price. As I left the kiosk, the owner told me in English: “By the way, he is a very nice guy. A hard worker. But he is Arab.”

—
Arabs, Christians, and Jews

Thirty percent of Israelis are not Jews. Most of the minority are Arabs who are either Muslim or Christian. The remaining people are immigrants from the former Soviet Union — Christians and atheists — who fled the country in the early 1990s and were able to emigrate to Israel because they had at least one grandparent who was a Jew even though they themselves were not Jews. The latter group has become very successful in Israel because they were highly educated in fields like engineering and the high-tech industry. But the Arab community has always had higher levels of poverty, crime, and poor education. Nearly all of them work in blue-collar or service jobs — if they are
employed at all.

When the owner told me that they guy — a 30-year-old by the name of Faiez who works at a falafel stand during the day — was an Arab, I admit that I hesitated for a split second. The American and Israeli sides of my brain were battling each other. The American said not to be racist since the United States has usually been an idealistic, multi-ethnic society — at least in theory, if not always in practice. The realist Israeli in me said to forget about it. After all, I did not really know Faiez — although the kiosk owner said that he was a good guy, this might be a risky endeavor for all the obvious reasons.

Finally, the American in me won. I told the kiosk owner in Hebrew: “What do I care? A good guy is a good guy.”

—
The Israeli Reaction

I was still a little unsure after I had hired Faiez, so I went to ask some Israeli friends at a bar that night for their thoughts. The owner of the place told me that he always prefers to hire Jews. After all, when you want to build a Jewish country out of nothing but sand, it is important to make sure that all Jews are employed and able to survive. (Although, the owner’s statement was not entirely accurate. Some of the waitresses he had hired were non-Jews from the former Soviet Union, so perhaps he had truly meant that he would not hire any Arabs.) Others offered thoughts that were meant as jokes but offered insights into the Israeli mentality as well. “Don’t leave an Arab guy alone in your apartment; he might try to steal something.” “If anything happens to you, we’ll know what.”

Imagine this conversation occurring in the United States, and replace the word “Arab” with “black” or “Hispanic.” For all of the good things about Israeli society, the sad truth is that this country is incredibly racist as well. A recent wave of immigration brought black Jews from Ethiopia to Israel, but other Israeli Jews frequently refer to them with the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word. For people who were born and raised, for example, in the United States or Britain, these attitudes are always shocking because people in our native countries are less racist, and any racism is at least not spoken bluntly and outright in public.

Now, I am not excusing the racism; I merely intend to explain it. As most people know, Israel has been attacked by the surrounding Arab countries since its inception. Waves of Palestinian terrorism and suicide bombings swept through the country in the late 1980s and 1990s. In this small country — roughly the size of New Jersey — nearly everyone knows someone who died in a war or terrorist attack. For obvious reasons, this affects people mentally. Israelis my age were preteens and teenagers during the worst of the intifadas. The effects are two-fold: 1.) Many Israeli men have some level of
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of military service; and 2.) Israelis have a myopic view that the surrounding peoples — Jordanians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and Syrians — are not individual peoples but simply “Arabs” who want to push the Jews into the sea. The racism in Israeli society recently extended to the city of Petah Tikva, which wants to monitor and “help” Jewish, teenage girls who date older, Arab men. (Although, as I noted, there is also crime, poverty, and education involved in addition to racism.)

In just one example: One friend of mine was fired upon while fighting in Lebanon; a few of his friends died. A few years later, he saw a few other friends die when a Palestinian terrorist took control of a bus and plowed them down in the street. You can imagine what he thought when I told him that I had hired an Israeli Arab to clean my apartment.

—
Me and Faiez

So, Faiez came over. He was very friendly, and he did a wonderful job cleaning. I gave him the wage plus a good tip. While he cleaned, we would watch soccer and basketball on television, talk about girls, and he would ask me about my American DVD collection. (For example, how do you explain “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in basic Hebrew? I said, “A girl in high school kills…” and then held up two fingers to my mouth to imitate fangs. He understood and laughed.)

I do not speak Arabic, and he does not know English, so we compromised on Hebrew. But we started to teach each other a few phrases in our native languages. Faiez would see my neighbors — cute, Israeli girls in their twenties — walk by and then make the usual comments to me in typical guy-fashion. He asked one if she needed someone to clean her apartment; she declined curtly and walked away. That same night, he asked if my girlfriend — an Israeli Jew who was born and raised in Jerusalem — was Muslim. I responded, perhaps sheepishly because I did not want to risk offending him, that she was not.

Later, Faiez told me this past week that it is hard for him to meet girls. I was not surprised. Most Israeli Arabs live in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and in a few towns in the northern and southern parts of the country — not here in the central region. I said that there are some dating websites for Muslims — probably even for Arabs in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip — and that I would find one for him. But then Faiez said something that made me pause mentally for a moment: “I do not have a lot of friends either. Can I come just to hang out sometimes? You seem like a good guy.”

—
A New Friendship?

My mind did not know what to think. But out of my American politeness (as opposed to Israeli bluntness), I said: “Of course! You are a good guy too.”

After Faiez left, I went to talk to my friends again. First, I called my girlfriend. “Jews and Arabs just don’t become friends here; it just doesn’t happen,” she said. “You should screen his calls, and hire someone else.” Another friend who owns a bar in the city: “You know what I think. If you become friends, do NOT bring him here.” (“Not a problem,” I replied. “He is a Muslim and does not drink alcohol.”) But three other people responded: “A person is a person. Who cares what his religion is? If someone said these things about Jews, we would be angry!” The responses to my situation perfectly reflected the polarization in Israeli society and politics — there is hardly anything between the far left and the hard right.

Since I had originally hired Faiez to clean my apartment and he seemed like a nice guy, I no longer had any concerns about the fact that he was a Muslim Arab. I was more concerned about my personal motivations. Did I hire him and possibly want to become friends with him because he was a poor Arab who needed the money? That would be condescending. Was I considering becoming friends with him out of a desire, to help promote peace in some small way, to build a peaceful, Jewish-Arab connection between two people? That would reduce him to being simply “an Arab” and not a person in his own right. If I would become friends with Faiez, it would only have to be for the fact that he was a nice guy whom I liked.

So, after reflecting on this situation and writing this essay, that is what I decided to do. Now I’m just thinking about what I will tell my girlfriend.

Prior Letter: The Bright Side of Life

Chef Management

BELLEVILLE, Illinois — Since I have completed most of an Executive and International M.B.A. at two different universities in two different countries, I can now… manage the cooking of a multi-course meal using Gantt charts! I’m glad that the thousands of dollars spent are proving worthwhile.

National Debt

This is what the Economist thinks the United States should do about its increasing government debt.

Facebook Marketing

This is old news to those who, like myself, have worked in Internet marketing, but tools like Facebook and Twitter can be valuable. Here are some of the tips I’ve learned in various positions.

1. Be Yourself. Many businesses believe that they should create a Facebook or Twitter profile with the name of your company: “Acme Boxes.” This is the complete opposite of what they should do.

First, having your presence consist only of a faceless corporation is boring. The Internet has a short attention span, so everything needs to be catchy. Your identity should not be “Acme Boxes” — it should be “Bob Smith (who happens to be CEO of Acme Boxes).” Use your real name and picture. The person Facebooking or Twittering should post about all sorts of things including funny anecdotes and personal interests, not only the newest sale his company is offering. Facebook and Twitter users want to befriend interesting people, not corporations. (Billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson has many Twitter followers, but I bet that very few of them care what his company does on a daily basis. Branson is just a cool guy.)

The brand awareness that your company gains — after all, it is listed in your profile and occasionally discussed in your posts — comes indirectly. Be informal and fun. Leave the formal, boring communications jargon to the marketing department that deals with traditional media outlets. People who use social media frequently are young, tech-savvy, and cynical when it comes to advertising. Be a real person online — everyone can tell when someone is just there to sell something.

2. Do Not Spam. The quickest way to lose potential customers and be ignored in the social-media sphere is to put a sales pitch in your status every hour. Fewer than half of your Facebook status updates and Tweets should be related to business. Again, people want to befriend you, not your company. The Internet is viral — for better and for worse. If one person does not like you, everyone will find out soon enough. (Although, if one person does like you, everyone will know as well.) Post on a wide variety of interesting subjects. If you post something with the word “baseball,” a Twitter search for that word will bring up your post. And you might get a few baseball fans to follow you and learn about your company.

3. Be Careful. There was a line in an episode of the 1990s, American sitcom “Newsradio” that went something like: “Taking something off the Internet is like trying to take the pee out of a swimming pool.” Even if you delete an e-mail, a Facebook post, or a Twitter entry, chances are that it still exists on some hard drive or server somewhere. Especially if someone saw it, did not like it, and saved it. Just because marketing is less controlled by executive suits in the rapid-fire Information Age does not mean that anything and everything is permissible. Don’t be like the teenage girl who posted scandalous pictures of herself on Facebook only to have everyone at school see them instead of just her boyfriend. Think before you post. Even if you are not the CEO or Vice President of Communications, you still represent your company in the subconscious minds of your Internet community.

More thoughts to follow.

Value of Stamps

BELLEVILLE, Illinois — My father died two years ago, right about at the time that I was leaving Boston for Israel. Since I am back in the States on vacation, I have been going through the stamp collection that he left me. According to this website, here would be the values of some of my stamps, then and now, if they were still in mint condition (they are not):

• 1903 George Washington issue (scarlet-shield issue) — 2 cents — $20
• 1922 Statue of Liberty — 15 cents — $26.50
• 1931 Golden Gate Bridge — 20 cents — $16.50

I ran some quick calculations. The total return for these three stamps would be 9,900%, 17,600%, and 8,200% respectively. The average annual rates of return would be 93%, 202%, and 106% 6.7%, 6.1%, and 5.8% respectively.

This got me thinking. Since the Baby Boomers will be retiring over the next several years, they will be selling their positions in their retirement funds. As a result, the stock market might not provide its historical-average annual rate of return of ten percent anymore. So, investors, including young people, might put their money elsewhere — especially after society was spooked once again by the 50% decline in the stock market at the height of the financial crisis recently.

With these prospective rates of return on something as simple as stamp collecting, it is possible that people will eventually treat them as stable investments like bonds that are nearly guaranteed to increase in value (albeit at a low rate) each year as opposed to risky investments in stocks. why do people still purchase stocks? Still, I write this with the standard caveat — nothing, not gold or anything else, has any intrinsic value. Everything is worth only what someone will pay for it. If no one, for some reason, would want to pay for historic stamps anymore in the future, then such an investment would be worthless.

But, now, I am curious. I’m going to look up my old baseball cards and research their rates of return.

Correction: The earlier percentages listed were incorrect because I had miscalculated them. This is why I became a writer and first went into journalism.

Another correction: Thanks to commenter Mike for reminding me about the difference between simple and compound interest.

Clumsy Men

BELLEVILLE, Illinois — So I just saw this commercial for Yellowbook, which seems to be new name for the Yellow Pages here in the United States. [The one I watched on television seems to be a few seconds shorter than the YouTube version.]

My reaction: Yet another American commercial in which men are portrayed as idiots! The husband is incompetent. When the wife hears about his new job, she expresses no concern for his well-being. Instead, she takes out a policy to get some money in case something happens to him!

If this had been the only commercial to make men look silly, I would have laughed at the joke. But when I see such a trend over several years, it is impossible to ignore the subconscious message that women rule and men are buffoons.

Meetings

Most meetings in the business world are useless, but if you must have one, here is how to do it.

A Universal Word

NEWARK, New Jersey — So I was changing planes on my way from Tel Aviv to St. Louis when I walked by a group of men outside the security gate. As I and a few other passengers walked by, they yelled, “Moneet!“

That’s the Hebrew word for taxi. I stopped, momentarily confused, and then realized that they were adapting their sales pitch to the airline that has just dropped off a group of passengers. (I had flown on El Al to the United States.) They probably knew the word for taxi in dozens of languages. Smart marketing.

The Economic Future

Every American should watch this thirty-minute, non-partisan documentary on the financial apocalypse towards which the United States is heading.

Related: Why My Generation is Pissed Off and The Upcoming Generational War

Economic Future

Is the primary threat to the U.S. economy inflation or deflation? Check out the presentation in this blog post. The author believes it is the latter.

Israeli Start-Ups

RISHON LEZION, Israel — While discussing the new book “Start-Up Nation,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach addresses why Israel is more economically viable in the long-term than oil-rich Arab countries:

Sidestepping the usual discussion of Israel as an embattled nation, [the book] focuses instead on the invincible ingenuity of the Israeli people, and their vast technological contribution to the global economy…

…as Start-Up Nation makes clear, Israel today is one of the most highly educated and technologically advanced nations on Earth, with one of the planet’s fastest-growing economies.

The time has come for world Jewry to see Israel as the place where the limitless potential of the Jewish people is finally being made manifest. All we needed was for people to get out of our way, and just look at how we thrive. And we prosper not as a self-absorbed nation but as a people who make vast contributions to all of mankind…

Many a Jew has wondered aloud why the Arabs got all the oil and Israel got none. What could God have been thinking in making despots and dictators like the Saudis and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi so insanely rich, while Israel has to struggle for every shekel it earns?

Only now to do we see the truth. Oil is the greatest curse ever to befall the Arabs.

By simply digging a hole and having money flow from the ground, the Arab states had little incentive to build universities or a hi-tech industry. And when the day comes – and it will – when the world finally finds an alternative energy source, these despotic regimes will collapse, returning to the sand from which they arose.

This isn’t rocket science. All of us know at least one rich friend whose kids don’t have to work, and who consequently became indolent. Israel has had to struggle for everything it has. No country has ever been more unjustly reviled or more continuously attacked.

Conversely, no country better inspires the world to ponder the infinite capacity of humans to rise from the ashes of despair and build a shining state on a hill.

While Rabbi Boteach is correct on a macroeconomic level, the high-tech industry on a societal level here is more complicated than he knows. There are indeed positive aspects, but there are also negative ones.

In the twentieth century, the American economy generally had stable, long-term growth because of the existence of large, national, and global companies whose purpose was to generate long-term profits and jobs by providing new products and services over time. But, as I have noticed in the several Israeli  companies where I have worked, the nature of start-ups is inherently different.

When I was working as a marketing manager, I overheard a conversation between a new hire and the chairman of the board. The chairman told the coworker that the exit strategy was to sell the company’s innovation to Google as soon as possible. The coworker rightly asked, “So, what will happen to me? Will I be out of a job?” The board chairman laughed, gave a dismissive answer, and changed the subject. (By the way, our contracts specifically stated that employees would receive no money from any sale of the company.)

As Shlomo Maital, a business columnist for The Jerusalem Report, asks in a recent interview with several Israeli business analysts (the article is not available online):

Israel’s business model was based on selling its brains, as start-ups, at inflated prices. These baby companies were “adopted” and their knowhow shipped overseas, before they could mature and create well-paying jobs and incomes for middle-class Israelis. Why has Israel failed to grow global companies in the past 10-15 years?

The interviewees responded by saying that the government needs to invest more in areas including alternative energy. But the major problem is that Israelis are a people with no patience for anything — including work life. The idea behind start-ups is not to build companies that will exist for the long-term but for the owners to get rich as quickly as possible. A classmate from my M.B.A. program once told me a story: A start-up CEO was told by a venture capitalist that the company could get $100 million if it offered an IPO the following month but that the firm could get $500 million if it waited for one year. The CEO, of course, chose the first option.

Another company for whom I worked would routinely fire employees just before three months or one year had elapsed to avoid salary increases or severance pay as mandated by our contracts and Israeli law. The stated reason for each firing, of course, was something false related to work performance. Start-ups frequently have little cash, and their existence depends on receiving future investment. So, in response, they must watch every single cost.

Smaller companies have many advantages over large ones including the ability to be quick and nimble rather than slow and bureaucratic, but they are generally more chaotic. Positions, job descriptions, and even the number of employees can change on a day-to-day basis. A long-term, stable career does not exist in this environment, especially when the owners and upper management have no patience and constantly worry about costs.

Israel has the fourth-highest level of income disparity — also known as the gap between the rich and the poor — in the world. It is not hard to understand the cause. Israel’s high-tech culture creates a few multi-millionaires whose only resulting contribution to the local economy is their increased consumer spending. Their companies and technologies are sold to Western countries, who then receive the later economic benefits. Lower-level employees move from start-up to start-up when one is either sold or bankrupt, rarely moving into upper management and receiving high salaries because the owners typically hold those positions on a day-to-day basis as well. Most other Israelis — those who are less educated or members of minority communities like Israeli Arabs — work in low-paying jobs in the blue-collar, service, or tourism industries.

Rabbi Boteach correctly notes that Israeli start-ups do benefit the world and provide the country with good branding, but Israeli society in general does not always see the benefits.

Elsewhere: The Freakonomics blog interviews the authors of “Start-Up Nation.”

Beautiful Women

Nearly every image of women that people see in advertisements, movies, and photography — and sometimes even television shows and broadcast news — is distorted. This short video shows how.

Hummus Wars

RISHON LEZION, Israel — A group of Lebanese chefs turned an attempt to break a worldwide record in hummus production into a diatribe against Israel. Here is the amusing story. In the Middle East, everything is controversial — even food.

In the meantime, here is a recipe for hummus that I found online. I wish I could remember exactly were.

1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

DIRECTIONS
Combine the garbanzo beans, yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil,
water, salt, pepper, and cumin in a blender or food processor, blend
until smooth.

I’m going to try it soon.

Cultural Nihilism

LONDON and JERUSALEM — The Daily Mail reports on efforts to change British drinking habits (and includes, of course, several tabloid-worthy pictures):

Such scenes are not uncommon, which is why Cardiff – one of the country’s worst cities for binge drinking – has just banned boozing on the streets.

The crackdown is aimed at late night revellers, targeting rowdy hen and stag parties and generally trying to make the streets safer after dark.

Police can use the new powers to confiscate alcohol or arrest anyone who defies them.

The ban has been a success in trials in small areas but will spread across the entire city in time for Christmas and the New Year.

Yesterday it was hailed as a big step towards ‘reclaiming the streets’ from drunken yobs.

Cardiff Central MP Jenny Willott said: ‘Late night alcohol-fuelled crime and anti-social behaviour is a huge problem on the streets.

‘People deserve to have a night out without the fear of intimidation or facing violence as a result of excessive alcohol consumption.

‘This ban should help the law-abiding and responsible majority to reclaim the streets.’

When I lived in London in 2001 and worked as a bartender at the Zetland Arms, I observed that British people drink a lot — a lot more than your average American. But it was still within reasonable limits. Every night, the regulars — a friendly-but-sad bunch — would arrive after work and drink pint after pint while watching sports. Then they would leave for home late at night and return the next evening.

Later in the evening, the young people would arrive. Since pubs had to close at 12:30 a.m., they would drink a lot and then move to a club or hang out on the streets. (It is legal to drink outside in counties including Britain and Israel.) But I rarely saw any problems. The closest I ever got was when I took the drink out of the hand of a drunken Scotsman because I was angry and he refused to leave at closing time. Luckily, the manager came over and calmed him down. (One lesson of bartending in London: If you want to befriend a Scotsman, mention the film “Braveheart” in a positive way.)

But, sadly, it seems that things have become much worse:

…the proportion of women who binge-drink almost doubled between 1998 and 2006 and is now at 15% (men who binge-drink increased by 1% to 23%). However, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-old men binge-drinking decreased by 9% since 2000. Researchers also found that whilst fewer children are drinking, those that do drink are drinking much more than they did in the past.

Violent crime by youths is also an increasing problem. If the reports are credible (I have not been to Britain since 2001), then English cities are dealing with mobs of drunken, violent youths every night.

If you want to see the future of a country, look at its young people. Great Britain, once known as the economic, cultural, and fashion capital of the world, seems to be crumbling. I first realized this when former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started giving speeches several years ago defending the very idea of the country itself.

The still-unanswered question facing Blair in the 1990s was: What does it mean to be “British” as opposed to “English,” “Welsh,” or “Scottish”? The United Kingdom is a political entity created through conquest that has rarely, if ever, had a collective sense of identity. Blair tried, unsuccessfully, to brand the country as “Cool Britannia.”

The British Empire collapsed after World War II, and the British people never quite recovered subconsciously as the United States, a former colony, became the new leader of the free world. Decades leader, the British people viewed Blair as George W. Bush’s lap dog in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. (In geopolitical terms, Blair could do little else.) It was a confirmation of the global humiliation that the British people have been feeling after centuries of power and influence had disappeared.

In recent years, Scotland and Wales formed their regional parliaments and became more autonomous. The current prime minister, Gordon Brown, is a Scot and now deeply unpopular. It is indeed possible that Great Britain will cease to exist in the coming years. As the country devolves, it might also lose sovereignty to the European Union and the euro.

Cultural divisions and economic conditions are also tearing the country apart. Decades of mass immigration have caused many Brits to feel that their country is no longer “British.” The most-popular, national food is now seen as chicken tikka masala rather than fish ‘n’ chips. (One former coworker here in Israel moved here even though he is not a Jew because he said that his country no longer exists.) Radical Muslims in Britain condemn democracy, want to impose Shari’a law, and have plotted terrorist attacks. Anti-Semitism is skyrocketing (see here and here). Young men are becoming more apathetic and willing to live with their parents as well as on the dole.

The most significant example of the negative feelings held by Britons was the recent inclusion of Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party, on the political, panel-discussion show “Question Time.” Both journalism and the free-market are perfect bellwethers of cultural trends. Companies, even media ones, must tailor their products, services, and marketing pitches to pre-existing trends in society. Journalists, who ideally have their fingers on the pulses of people, decide which views are relevant to a the discussion of a given topic. When the BBC, the standard-bearer of British journalism, decides that a person like Griffin is suited to a serious political discussion, that is a clear indicator of what a significant segment of society is feeling.

In the theory of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Great Britain may be nearing towards the end of the life-cycle of all nations and empires as a result of all of these trends and feelings. With all of these cultural, political, and social problems in the subconscious minds of young people, is it any wonder that they seem to have lost hope in the future? Without any optimism, they turn to alcohol and violence out of nihilistic despair.

One of my favorite 1970s-era bands is the Moody Blues, and I think their following pop-rock song from 2000 is an apt description of British malaise:

We’re on a runaway train, rolling down the track / And where it’s take us to, who knows where it’s at / But if we hold together, we can make it back / For an English sunset

And I’ve decided I can live with humility / And the sad decay / ‘Cause that’s the English way

We keep the faith alive in every thing we do / And at the end of the line, we still keep coming through / And though it’s sad and sorry, what else can we do / It’s an English sunset

And I’ve decided they can wait for the requiem / And take it day by day / ‘Cause that’s the English way

As someone who has loved British culture since he was a child, I write this post with extreme sadness. Still, I fear that the same attitudes are affecting behavior in Israel, specifically in Jerusalem. As Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz notes:

Anyone with more than passing knowledge of the atmosphere in central Jerusalem will be aware that the heart of our capital city is rapidly becoming a late night no-go zone.

Clusters of violent youth rule and roam the streets, armed with knives and with the beer and vodka bottles they’ve emptied, picking fights with unsuspecting victims.

Of course, the police are not solely to blame for the deepening climate of intimidation and violence. As [Public Security Minister Yitzhak] Aharonovitch and Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Dudi Cohen have frequently observed, ours is becoming an increasingly violent society, more and more kids are now carrying knives, and the response needs to be found, at least in part, in better parenting and better educational values.

I travel to Jerusalem several times a week, and I will likely be returning to live there soon. I was walking on the way to a pub with my girlfriend, a born-and-raised Jerusalemite, and we were speaking in English. A man on the street walked up and tried to convince us to come to his bar. (There are dozens of such people in the city center’s streets who try to get English-speaking tourists to visit their restaurant or bar.)

I waved him away and said, “We don’t need [your flier]” in Hebrew. His response? “Your accent sucks!” he yelled in English. I was about to walk over and return the favor when my girlfriend stopped me and said, “Do NOT talk like that here!” Unfortunately, people have been assaulted there for less.

As I have written in my Letters from Israel series, the Jewish state is rife with political, religious, and social divisions that many fear will tear the country apart. This has led to increased anti-social behavior and the possible destruction of the civil society that had developed since the refounding of Israel in 1948. Perhaps young Israelis have developed the same pessimism regarding the future that British youths now have.

As a result of the geographic isolation of the United States — it is separated from the world by two, gigantic oceans — the country is usually the last to receive cultural trends from Europe (as well as technological innovations from eastern Asia). Since young people there are increasing angry and frustrated over their economic and social conditions, I wonder whether the same anti-social behavior will occur in America soon.

Israeli Work Culture

RISHON LEZION, Israel — I recently came across some pointers written by Intel for its American employees who work in Israel:

Present ideas clearly and concisely, getting right to the point and using clear logic.  Expect to be cut off regularly during a presentation. Israelis prefer to ask questions and discuss issues immediately rather than wait until the end of a presentation, and it is best to pause and respond to them.  Be prepared with plenty of supporting facts to support your position.  Keep presentations shorter than what you may normally give to allow for questioning and side discussions.

Israelis are generally fond of debate and will typically discuss any topic very passionately, and visitors are often taken back by the tone or loudness of the discussion. In most cases, this passionate expression should not be mistaken for anger, but viewed rather as a culturally appropriate form of expression.

It is best not to bring up politics in Israel, but if the topic arises, listen, be respectful, and avoid antagonistic responses. Be sensitive to the fact that most people have experienced some tragedy related to the political conflict in Israel.  Safer topics of conversation are travel and popular sports such as swimming, soccer (which is called football) and basketball.  It is appropriate to  discuss your personal life in conversation but try to limit the details to general information. Polite inquiry about the family of  your Israeli counterpart, however, shows an interest and is generally welcomed.

For more insights into the Israeli workplace, read this interesting — and insightful — post by Israel Weisser. From my experience, I have noticed that Israelis can also be irrational and disorganized to a point that frustates Americans and Europeans, who usually think in a linear, logical fashion.

No Voicemail

RISHON LEZION, Israel — Tamar Caspi must be a recent immigrant from the West who is getting used to Israeli culture:

THE WHOLE phone call, voicemail, text message conundrum [in dating] is even worse in Israel where received calls are free but the person making the call gets charged. That means people hang up before the machine answers and don’t leave a message but expect the person to call back based on checking their caller ID. It is so frustrating! Spend the extra minute or pay the 17 agorot and leave me a message!

Israelis hate voicemail. I cannot emphasize that enough. Most of my friends have voicemails on their mobile phones that they have never heard. As I wrote in a prior post, Israelis can be extremely cheap:

I was once talking with an Israeli friend who was complaining about the national economy here. Like many people, he bemoaned the fact that it is hard for people to become rich in the Jewish state — unlike, his presumption went, the little effort required for success in the United States.

His reason? “Everyone is cheap with everyone here.” (The comment might have been viewed as anti-Semitic if it had not come from an Israeli and had not been, in all fairness, accurate.) In every business — and sometimes personal — transaction, everyone here tries to get something for as little as possible. But the individual’s gain might come at society’s cost. Economists, what say you?

When a person is at work, he will use his work phone to make personal calls rather than use his mobile phone. Israelis will hang up a second before voicemail kicks in to avoid paying anything. They never check their voicemail. Israelis will check their missed calls on Caller ID and then return them.

As a result of this cultural tendency, Israelis answer their phones right away whenever anyone calls: whether they are on a date, in a business meeting, or working at the counter with customers waiting in line. They know that the person will not leave a message and that he might be calling from a work number listed as “Unknown,” making it impossible to know who called. Israelis have no patience for anything to begin with, and it is even worse with cell phones. It seems rude at first to Westerners, but you get used to it.

Whenever I am on a date or in a meeting, I reject incoming calls. My dates and my boss never understand it:

“Someone is calling, why don’t you answer the phone?” “I’ll call back later.” “But why not just take it now?” “Because it is rude.” “What does that word mean?”

That last line was a joke. Sort of.

Feminism’s Results

Joanne Lipman, while discussing the gains and losses of women in recent years, writes something that all women should realize:

Consider the facts: When I graduated from college in 1983, women earned only 64 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Today? Women earn just 77 cents. By other measures, women’s gains have stalled: board seats and corporate officer posts have been flat — or declined in recent years…

First, we can begin by telling girls to have confidence in themselves, to not always feel the need to be the passive “good girl.” In my time as an editor, many, many men have come through my door asking for a raise or demanding a promotion. Guess how many women have ever asked me for a promotion?

I’ll tell you. Exactly … zero.

Sure, it’s a risk to ask for a raise. But women need to take risks — and to realize that at some point they will fail. This is an incredibly hard thing to do, especially for women brought up in a culture that celebrates unrealistic perfection in every sphere, from beauty to housekeeping. (emphasis added)

This is a perfect example of why statistics stating that women make XX cents on the job compared to men are laughable. First, it is impossible to control for every variable between two people or populations, especially for those intangible concepts like personality and office politics that are unfortunately a fact of everyday life.

Secondly, and most importantly, women are adverse to risk for the reasons that Lipman states. (How many girls die in teenage accidents of playing chicken in a car?) Women, out of maternal concerns, do not like risk and uncertainty. Men, however, crave risk because those who are successful are more attractive as resource-providers to women. Women are much less likely to demand raises (and negotiate higher salaries in interviews), so they typically earn less than men in the same positions. There are many more reasons, but you get the point.

Palestinian Society

The Jerusalem Report, a biweekly, English-language magazine on the Middle East and Judaism, has an interesting article with poll results from Palestinian society. The article is not online, so I’ll just present the interesting numbers taken by Palestinian pollsters:

• 51% do not trust their political leaders in general
• The percentage of people who trust Hamas has declined from 41% in January 2006 to 11% in June 2009
• 58%  disapprove of Hamas, and 38% approve
• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has a job-approval rating of 55% while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has a 64% disapproval rating
• If a parliamentary election were held today, the Fatah party would beat Hamas by a margin of 4 to 1
• If a presidential election were held today, Abbas would beat Haniyeh by 35% to 12% in a multi-party contest
• Palestinians are most concerned about internal fighting and the economy. In a second poll, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip ranked fourth out of the top-five concerns
• 70% favor the disarmament of political factions and the consolidation of weapons with official security forces
• 68% think Hamas should stop advocating the destruction of Israel
• Slightly more than half said that all rocket fire into Israel should cease
• 55% favor a two-state solution while 11% want a single, bi-national state
• 77% believe that Israel is not really a partner for peace
• 61% identify themselves as religious
• 49% want Palestinian law to be based on Islamic law
• 75% want a future State of Palestine to be a democracy
• 23% believe that their best ally is Egypt; the second-highest answer was “no one”

The margin of error was 6 percent.

Another Crash?

This chart scares the crap out of me.

Gift Certificates

RISHON LEZION, Israel — In the United States, employers typically give cash bonuses during the holiday season. In Israel, they give gift certificates that are valid at a few dozen types of stores. The holidays stretched this year from Rosh Hashanah on September 18 to the end of Sukkot tomorrow.

At my job, we received NIS 400 — roughly $100. I used my certificates today to purchase these books — some light reading for the next several Shabbats!

I may post reviews as I finish each book.